The poem “presents from my aunts in Pakistan” is about a girl brought up in America, but her family is from Pakistan, so she feels torn between the two cultures. She does not feel comfortable in either of the cultures.
The tone at the beginning of “search for your tongue” is very aggressive.
“You ask me what I mean.”
At the beginning of the poem, the poet’s voice is very defensive. About half-way through the poem, the poet’s voice starts speaking in Gujarati, this language is part of her life and she is confused by it.
In the poem “unrelated incidents”, the poet is rebelling against the English language. The tone of “unrelated incidents” in very loose and easy. Tom Leonard believes that ideas, attitudes and values are linked. He manages to create this tone by not speaking ‘proper’ English.
The tone of “presents from my aunts in Pakistan” is very calm all the way through.
There is a constant, third person voice throughout “unrelated incidents”. It sounds like a person talking about a news reader.
In “search for your tongue” the voice is also third person but it sounds like the poet is talking to the reader directly.
In “presents from my aunts in Pakistan” the voice is also third person but the poet could be talking to the reader or it could be a diary entry.
The poem “unrelated incidents” has no more than three words on each line and it looks jagged on the right hand side.
The poem “presents from my aunts in Pakistan” has a random amount of words per line. It also looks jagged on both sides.
The poem “search for my tongue” has an average of six words per line and it looks jagged on the right hand side.
There is no punctuation in “unrelated incidents” and most of the words are spelt wrong.
There is punctuation and good spelling in both “presents from my aunt in Pakistan” and “search for my tongue”
In “unrelated incidents”, Tom Leonard uses the word “scruff”, which is quite a strong word and has a strong effect on the reader. Leonard ends the poem with the words “belt up”; this is a very strong statement to end on.
In “unrelated incidents” the reader gets the impression that the character in the poem thinks that people judge you by the way you speak and that he doesn’t want to talk about the truth with a strong accent because he doesn’t think the audience will believe him.
I personally find that the poem that is most effective is “unrelated incidents” because it makes the strongest impression on the reader.
